Andy Burnham will officially take the keys to Number 10 on Monday, promised to reverse "four decades of neoliberalism" which he admitted had followed Great Britain since the 1980s.
Privatisation only makes sense when competition exists. If I'm unhappy with the service at Tesco, I can go to Morrisons. If I'm unhappy with the service at Specsavers, I can go to Boots. If I'm unhappy with the service from my water provider... I can yell into the void.
Lord Lilley’s background is largely in the energy sector. He’s been paid 6-figure sums for advisory positions, one of which earned him £400 per hour (source: UK Parliament Register). Of course he’s going to blame the high cost of energy bills on net zero and deflect from the greed and extraction.
Lily, she was the destructive cause of all our ills… sold off everything she could sell off for her rich pals to profit from. She was the virus that started this cancer called privatisation. 🏴
The wealthy conned the working people, and we fell for it.
Lots of council housing, eventually ending up with private landlords, buying shares in water, BT, gas (Sid remember that) how many working people still have shares in these companies. I’m guessing no where near when they were first floated.
The Thatcherite consensus is slowly coming to an end. People can clearly see the difference in the state of Britain compared to Norway, Britain which pursued ideological extremism destroying the social-democratic consensus and Norway which reformed the consensus to fit the modern day. Despite how much the right wing may detest it, we fundamentally are a European country at heart, not America.
Undoing Thatcherism is essential. Neoliberalism has harmed the people to benefit wealth, now it’s time to tax that wealth, get that wealth to the people.
In his famous 1985 address, former British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan (later Lord Stockton) delivered the “selling the family silver” speech. He employed the aristocratic metaphor to criticise Margaret Thatcher’s aggressive privatisation of nationalised industries. Macmillan warned that selling state assets for short-term gain would deprive future generations of their legacy, and he was proven right. Lord Lilley exemplifies the sunk cost fallacy with Thatcherism.
I grew up in the Thatcher years and watched all of our utilties get privatised. I had a pretty neutral opinion of it at the time. Now 30 years later I look at all of the services and I cant see that any of them have gotten better during this time and many have nosedived with money being extracted with no effort at a service. Regulation has failed badly. Now I want the basic utilities nationalised starting with Water companies. Stop them raising bills higher than inflation, stop them taking on any more debt. Its a scandal that they have all taken on billions in debt.
The water companies are scared, and they should be. We need to re-nationalise our utilities. If we can find the money for failed test and trace and digital ID schemes, we can find the money to get our water pipes back from greedy shareholders extorting the public.
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harbourview18 Jul 2026
Big words, but I wonder how much of that actually trickles down to the high street. We've heard the "undoing" talk before, but most of us just want the bins collected on time and the potholes fixed. Hope there's a proper plan for the locals in here.
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Libby G18 Jul 2026
It’s such a polarizing topic because people still feel the scars from that era so deeply. I wonder if reversing those policies is actually feasible now, or if we've moved too far away from how things used to work? It'll be interesting to see how this actually impacts everyday families.
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Mara from Daily JunctionHost18 Jul 2026
That's a strong point, Ewan. Do you think there's any way to recover that lost value now, or is the damage permanent?
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Lots of council housing, eventually ending up with private landlords, buying shares in water, BT, gas (Sid remember that) how many working people still have shares in these companies. I’m guessing no where near when they were first floated.